A Guide to Creating a Favicon for your Blog

Today I’m going to show you guys how to create a favicon for your blog. Favicons are useful for making your blog more aesthetically pleasing and making it stand out in your readers bookmarks.

This is my favicon (its the heart made out of flowers). This is how it looks in Firefox 4.0





Right lets get straight into how to make one.

First of all decide on what you’d like to be your favicon. Some people use the first letter of their site while others use shapes or logos. Just make sure whatever you choose is clear to see even in very small dimensions. Save it as a .png file measuring 16x16 pixels.

Then follow the steps given below. They’re different for Wordpress and Blogger.

Blogger

Go to favicon generator site Dynamic Drive. Upload image to generate the favicon and download it. This will convert it to an .ico file. Upload this .ico file to photo sharing site Picturestack. Do not use flickr or photobucket as they do not support ico files. Copy the link and paste into an app like notepad.

Then log into your blogger dashboard and go to template –> Edit HTML



Find this line of code near the top.

<title><data:blog.pageTitle/></title>.

Directly underneath this line paste the following code.

<link rel="shortcut icon" type="image/x-icon" href="/favicon.ico">

Replace 'favicon.ico' with the url of your favicon (the one you pasted into notepad).

Then hit save and voila your done. The favicon may not appear immediately depending on the browser but it shouldn’t take long.



Wordpress

First of all add add your favicon as a .png to your media gallery (media -> add new)

Log into your wordpress dashboard and scroll down to plugins –> add new.

Search for ‘All in One Favicon’. Install and activate it.

Find the plugin listed under settings and click on it.

In the fields named ‘backend ico’ and ‘frontend ico’ fill in the url of your favicon image.



Hit save and your done. With this method your favicon will appear immediately. I hope this little tutorial will be of use to all of you who don’t yet have one. If you have any questions just leave them in the comments and if you use the tutorial to add a favicon let me know so I can check it out.

A Fashion Bloggers Guide to Growing Your Blogs Traffic

The easiest and most overlooked way of boosting your traffic is by submitting your blog to the search engines. You won't end up with huge traffic from the start but it will build up over time and you never know some of the visitors may become subscribers or regular visitors. The main search engines are:

Yahoo

Dmoz Open Directory

Google

MSN

Dmoz is one you may never heard of but its the biggest directory on the web and google and aol are some of the search engines that use their directory.

This section is more suited to Wordpress users. A blog trackback is basically a way of informing a blogger that you've linked to their post. If they approve the trackback its listed in their comments section. Not only is it a polite way of letting the blogger know you've mentioned their post but it can drive traffic to your own blog as their readers will know that you've posted something related and hopefully check it out. So its a win win situation. How to do a trackback If both yourself and the blog you are linking to are on Wordpress you can just link in your usual way but if you for example are on wordpress and the post your linking to is on blogger (i.e different platforms) you'll need to check their post for a 'trackback url' or 'permalink' and enter it into the section on your posting area titled 'trackback url'. But it really is that simple!

Guest posting is another great way of driving traffic to your blog and opening up to a new audience. If you write a guest post for another blogger it gets linked to your own blog and if they've enjoyed your post they are likely to visit your blog. If you have a guest blogger posting on your site they're obviously going to promote the post which again drives traffic to your blog. Either way you'll be introducing a whole new readership to your blog. If your looking for a guest poster try adding a thread to the IFB groups page.



Twitter is a great tool to utilise and in my opinion all bloggers should have a twitter account with the link clearly displayed in their sidebar. It's actually my top referrer. Also make sure to have a retweet facility so your readers can share all those fab posts you write with their followers. I'm always surprised when I discover blogs without share buttons and it is the easiest way of sharing a post. Set it up so that all your posts are automatically posted to twitter as its a great source of traffic and it can have a viral effect meaning it can spread quickly. Wordpress has plugins for exactly this purpose. You can do this with facebook too. Apart from the traffic building aspect of twitter it has other benefits for a blogger. I've detailed them below:

Networking - communicating and conversing with other like minded people whether that be other bloggers or people who share your interests

Business Contacts - prospective advertising clients or PR agencies for example

Blog Post Ideas - conversations can often lead to blog post ideas

Asking Questions - whether it be web design related or SEO the twitterverse is full of experts on all kinds of subjects

Fact Checking - you might need to check a certain aspect of a post and there may well be people who have the knowledge you need So as you can see Twitter really is a vital tool in blogging.





Comment, comment, comment I can't stress this enough. But make them meaningful and genuine don't just post generic comments and add your link. Commenting is a really good way of developing a community feel to your blog as well as increasing your traffic. A lot of bloggers myself included visit the blogs of those who leave comments. You never know they may love your blog and leave a comment or follow/subscribe. It improves traffic in another way too as other readers may find your comment interesting and visit your blog which is another good reason for ensuring you only leave genuine, interesting comments. But please refrain from leaving comments telling the blogger you've followed and asking them to follow you back. This is really offputting and can make the blogger less likely to visit/follow your blog.

IFB is a vital resource for fashion bloggers. Jennine has succeeded in creating a community to network, share and learn. You can dramatically increase your traffic by actively participating in discussions and submitting your best posts for links a la mode. Check out Grit and Glamours guide to submitting to links a la mode here. IFB is also another great way of fostering relationships with other bloggers and has a wealth of resources available. Visit IFB here

Obtaining a high spot in search results is no easy feat but you can help yourself by selecting your keywords very carefully. Make sure your selecting words relevant to your post/blog. The optimum length for keyword phrases is 2 or 3 words as almost two thirds of searches are of that length. Another important aspect for SEO is to include your keywords in your blog post title. So those of you who choose song titles or literary quotes for post titles are missing out on increasing your search result placing. Titles are highly searchable, that's not saying you have to do this with every post but it is important if you want to fully utilise SEO. Another way of capitalising on SEO is by renaming your images to include your keywords. Many people find my blog through google image search and that is why. Don't make the titles overly long though. The last thing to mention is - DO NOT tag your posts with tonnes of different keywords as the search engines can penalise users who do this. Use only relevant keywords.

Different readers have a preference for different methods of subscribing so utilise all the different ways of subscribing and display them prominently on your blog. I'm always surprised at the vast amount of blogs without an email subscription form its so often overlooked but its actually my favorite way of subscribing. The other ways of subscribing are :

Google Friend Connect

Bloglovin

RSS

Kindle (check out my post on setting up your blog on kindle here)

Subscribers increase the amount of visits to your blog so they are a vital part of building traffic (and a community). They keep readers updated and encourage return visits. I hope this guide is useful and if you have any questions or feedback leave me a comment!

Publish Your Blog on Kindle in 5 Easy Steps

 

I recently added my blog to the amazon kindle network to allow my readers to view my blog on their kindle if they so wish. So i thought I'd do a little guide to what’s involved here.

Kindle Publishing for Blogs allows you to sign up and submit your blog feed. Amazon then converts this feed into a kindle-readable layout.

The main benefits to the blogger is a little added revenue and the fact that more readers will become aware of your blog as you can enter keywords which amazon users can search on. Kindle subscribers pay a small fee to gain access to your blogs which is usually $1.99 per month, the negative is that this fee is fixed (I wish it was free). Amazon takes 70% of this fee and the blogger retains 30%.

It’s free to join just visit the Kindle Publishing for Blogs page and create an account. So what’s stopping you?

Once you’ve created an account follow the following steps :





Click on ‘Your Blogs’ – its along the top of the page on the right hand side.



Then click on ‘Add Blog’ that's the one with the green cross next to it.



This is the screen that will be displayed next. Fill in the url of your blogs feed in the top field. Then click validate feed and a green tick will show underneath to show that your feed has been added successfully. Then fill in the other fields – blog title, tagline, blog description, your name, add a screenshot of your blog and one of your blog header, add keywords that kindle users can utilise to search for your blog. Press save and then click publish at the bottom.



To complete the process fill in your contact details and choose whether to add an account or be paid by cheque. FYI. only US users can be paid electronically all international users must be paid by cheque.

Then click publish and that’s it. It’ll take about 48 hours to be activated but it really is that simple!

Keep followers when switching from Blogger to Self Hosted Wordpress

As a lot of you know I recently switched from blogger to wordpress. Today I will present a guide on how to do the switch AND keep your followers.

So you’ve made the switch to wordpress but wanna keep your followers.

This post assumes you’ve imported your feed and set up your domain on Wordpress.

Re-directing Feed



Burn your feed to feedburner.

Go to the settings page on your blogger dashboard.

Then click on the site feed tab.

You’ll be presented with a page that looks like this:

Make sure the 1^st three options say full.

Then put your feedburner address in the option that says Post Feed Redirect URL.

Now you’ve successfully redirected your feed.

Re-directing Visitors

Now go the templates tab via your blogger dashboard.

Make sure your set to the minima template.

Then click on edit feed.

Replace all the text in the box with the following:

<html>

<head>

<script LANGUAGE="JavaScript">

<!--

window.location.replace("http://your url/");

-->

</script>

<noscript>

<meta http-equiv="Refresh" content="10; URL=http://your url/"/>

<meta http-equiv="expires" content="10"/>

<meta content="301 moved permanently"/>

<META CONTENT="NOINDEX, FOLLOW"/>

<META CONTENT="NOINDEX, FOLLOW"/>

</noscript>

<title>301 moved permanently</title>

</head>

<body>

<center>

<h1>name of your blog</h1>

<p>has been moved to new address</p>

<a href=" http://your blog"> <h1>http://your blog</h1></a>

<p>Sorry for inconvenience... </p>

</center>

</body>

</html>

Make sure to replace the words ‘your blog’ with your wordpress blog url. Also replace ‘name of your blog’ with your blog name (obviously) lol xx

This will ensure your visitors are auto re-directed to your new wordpress blog.

Google Friend Connect



Now we need to add your new url to friendconnect.

Go to http://www.google.com/friendconnect

Log in.

On the left hand side click on gadgets.

Then choose members.

Scroll down to the bottom and click on generate code.

Copy this code and paste it to your clipboard.

Log into your wordpress dashboard.

Under appearance on the left hand side of the page.

Click on widgets.

Find the one titled text and click on add.

In the big box underneath the ‘title’ box paste the code you copied earlier.

Choose the location for the GFC gadget under the box you put the code in.

Then click on save widget.

Redirecting wordpress Feed



The last step is to re-direct your wordpress feed.

Go to plugins – add new.

Search for a plugin titled feedburner configuration.

Install it.

Then activate it.

Find the plugin under the plugins section on the left hand side of your dashboard.

Click on feedburner configuration.

Under redirect feeds here – Fill in with your feedburner address and click save.

There you have it. After you’ve done all this next time you post all your followers should find the post in their google reader or on their blogger dashboard.

If you have any questions or problems just ask!

Japanese Nail Art and Tutorials

Nail art is huge in Japan. Whether its leopard print or floral, pearls, rhinestones or 3D. Its all the rage. This trend has now started to find its way into the western world. The singer Kelis has recently started wearing 3D nails. Nails inc now offers nail art as part of its manicures at debenhams stores nationwide. The recent s/s 2011 London fashion week featured models sporting all manners of different nail art and inside the London Trocadero they have a 3D nail art bar offering Japanese style nails.
Below you’ll find some tutorial videos from YouTube showing you how to achieve the look.